Examining recent initiatives to counter anti-Jewish prejudice from the United Nations, Germany, and the U.S. government, Yigal Carmon finds many ideas that could very well prove helpful. But, Carmon argues, all these proposals—despite their good intentions—suffer from the common flaw of paying insufficient attention to the most urgent, and probably most achievable, goal: deterring or silencing the anti-Semites themselves. Take, for instance, recent programs introduced by German authorities:

In . . . 2021, Germany’s government-funded Central Council of Jews launched a program called “Meet a Jew,” which was under the patronage of the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier. A few years prior, in 2017, a Munich-based NGO launched a [similar] program called “Rent-A-Jew” in an attempt to counter anti-Semitism. One of the Jewish participants in the program said, “We want to give people the chance to talk to the Jewish community. We want them to see what we’re completely normal people.”

It is interesting to note that a similar approach was adopted in 1933 by the Zentralverein (Central Organization of Jews in Germany), which in an attempt to counter the threat posed by Nazism published a 1,060-page encyclopedia about the contributions made by Jews in various fields. [Such] methods are misguided and cause the opposite of the desired effect. Moreover, they evade the crucial task of confronting anti-Semites themselves, and focus on the less-demanding task of doing PR for the Jews.

Among the more effective approaches Carmon suggests is holding social-media platforms responsible for inciting violence, which, he argues, can be done within the framework of America’s First Amendment:

Section 230(c)(1) of the U.S. Communications Decency Act must be repealed. Section 230 gives immunity to social-media companies that is not enjoyed by any other media outlet, and this enables illegal activities, including incitement to violence, to reach millions of people and take place on social media with no government regulation.

It seems that those who make the free-speech argument [against such a move] do not know what kind of dangerous content is actually being propagated on social media, and they believe that the ideas exchanged on social-media platforms are only a matter of aggressive political debate. They do not know that the content in question is criminal and illegal, such as recruitment, fundraising, and the sharing of manuals on how to carry out attacks by Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and neo-Nazi organizations. . . . In the U.S., a district court ruled in 2006 that the First Amendment does not protect the right to disseminate information meant to result in violence.

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”